


His Guitar

by Dog_Bearing_Gifts



Series: La Guitarra [1]
Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: 1942, Guitar, Horror, Idea not mine, Inspired By Tumblr, Pre movie, Skull guitar, guitar alebrije, inspired by headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-20 22:12:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14270619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dog_Bearing_Gifts/pseuds/Dog_Bearing_Gifts
Summary: On the first Día de Muertos following his death, Ernesto de la Cruz returns to Santa Cecilia for his guitar.





	His Guitar

In life, Ernesto could always count on his fans. Thus far, death was no different.

His mausoleum was as grand as a mausoleum could be, all white marble and fluted columns, stretching up to the sky, towering over everything else in the graveyard. On sunny days, Ernesto liked to think it would act like a beacon, reflecting sunlight like the moon and drawing every eye in Santa Cecilia to its greatest treasure. It wasn’t what he’d expected to find when he returned to his place of burial.

It was _more._

“Oh! _Oh!_ It’s de la Cruz!”

Ernesto smiled as the cry was echoed across the graveyard, heads turning toward the bridge some distance behind him. He raised a hand in greeting, catching additional comments tossed like flowers at his feet.

“Señor de la Cruz! You _must_ visit mi familia—they’ll have put your picture on their ofrenda!”

“Later, perhaps,” he replied with a chuckle.

“Ay, is there some special lady waiting for you?”

“Too many,” Ernesto said, returning the man’s sly grin with one of his own.

“Here to play in the plaza again?”

Ah, now _there_ was an idea. “Once I have my guitar!”

The dead moved aside as he dodged graves on the way to his mausoleum, forming a path as clear as the cempasúchil guiding souls to their loved ones, though even less permanent. He returned smiles, offered waves, called out short greetings, but never slowed his pace. He could bask in their attention once he had his guitar again.

A set of steps led to the door, lined with candles and festooned, as the rest of the structure was, with cempasúchil. But he could enjoy the sight later, when the guitar was in his hands and he could glance fondly back at the final resting place his fans had built for him. Once he could relish the attention of his family, living and dead, as he played and sang for the latter before the thinning veil between them both.

Anticipation nearly made Ernesto step through the door the moment he reached it; but reason prevailed, and he turned around, gave the dead in the graveyard a grin and a wave, winked, and slipped through. Whistles and applause followed him in.

The interior was just as opulent as the exterior, but Ernesto scarcely noticed the flowers, the oil painting of his likeness, the marble casket they’d buried him in. All he saw was the guitar. It rested on a set of metal hooks beneath his painting, gleaming faintly in the moonlight filtering through the wide windows.

Ernesto smiled. Once again, his family had taken care of him.

Perhaps he could have stepped through the casket, but the thought of standing _inside_ his own remains made him shiver. He went around to the side instead, awkwardly placing one hand on top and the other beneath, hoping to gain a better grip once he’d lifted it off its hooks.

It didn’t move.

Ernesto stepped back and then hoisted himself atop his casket, kneeling before the guitar. He held it properly this time, one hand on the body and one on the neck, and lifted.

Again, the instrument did not budge.

Frowning, he slid off the casket and went to the front window. Departed spirits were everywhere, standing before this grave or that, fawning over loved ones or reaching for offerings. As he watched, a middle-aged woman grasped a bottle of wine, the bottle duplicating in her hand. The original remained where it had been set; the faintly glowing copy went into her basket. Ernesto turned his attention elsewhere and saw the same thing repeated with a young couple and a mildly unsettling number of churros, one of which they handed to the small boy who had accompanied them.

Returning to the casket, he climbed atop it and tried lifting again. Once more, nothing. The guitar might as well have been part of the wall. He sat back slightly, trying for another plan, and happened to glance at the instrument’s head and the gold-toothed skull painted there. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say it was smiling.

Ernesto had thought, upon seeing his skeletal form for the first time, that he might no longer feel fear. It was something that settled in the pit of your stomach, after all; how could one feel it when one lacked a stomach? He had learned quickly that this was not the case. Fear still existed in the Land of the Dead. It could still send a jolt through one’s very being—and when he saw that smile, that was exactly what shot through him.

No.

No. That was impossible. The guitar was just that—a guitar. _His_ guitar. He’d taken it just as he’d taken Héctor’s life; by rights it was his. There was no reason why it shouldn’t respond to his promptings. He lifted the guitar again.

Again, nothing but that smile. No, not a smile. A trick of the light—or darkness, rather. The skull’s face, the teeth, were the same as ever. They did not move, they had not moved, they would not move. It was his proximity to his own grave, he reasoned. Kneeling atop his own decaying remains had warped his perception. Emboldened with that thought, he grasped the guitar once again.

A jolt, like a shock of electricity, shot through his hands before traveling up his arms and down to his core. He yelped, yanking his hands back—and that was when he felt something else, radiating from the guitar like warmth from a fire.

Satisfaction.

All pretense of reason, all excuses and justifications, fled his mind. There was nothing else for it. There was only the jolt, the emotion that wasn’t his, and the guitar at the center of it all. Smiling.

Fear nearly drove him back to the graveyard, but it transformed quickly, fading to anger. “You’re _my_ guitar,” he whispered. “And I need you for the next show.”  

He tried to lift it again, but a similar jolt made him yank his hands away. It was stronger this time, so strong that he needed a moment to shake the pain out. As he did, a memory came to his mind, unbidden: Héctor, downing a glass of poisoned tequila in a single swallow.

“ _Yes,_ he’s dead,” Ernesto hissed. “For twenty-one years, if you haven’t noticed.”

Dios mio. He was arguing with a guitar. He had argued with some ridiculous people in the past, but never an _instrument._ He grasped it again, and the jolt was so strong this time that he staggered backward, tumbling awkwardly off the casket and onto the floor. His own words echoed through his mind: _Twenty-one. Twenty-one. Twenty-one years, if you haven’t noticed._

He stumbled to his feet, clenching his jaw as he stared down the guitar. That infernal smile was still there, a smile that somehow did not distort the painted teeth at all, but he could no longer dismiss it as an illusion.

“Twenty-one years,” Ernesto repeated. “ _That’s_ how long you’ve been mine.”

Another memory surfaced: Héctor strumming the guitar in a rented room, singing “Remember Me” to his distant daughter.

“That isn’t how the song goes. Not anymore.”

The memory played in the back of his mind until the song concluded.

He exhaled, long and loud, casting a glance out one window and then another. No curious onlookers; nevertheless, the graveyard was full of fans. Of his family. And his family would want to know why he hadn’t yet emerged with the guitar in his hands. “You’ve traveled the country. You’ve been in _movies._ I’ve held you on every cover of every album I’ve made, and you want to stay _here_?”

Héctor again came to mind, smiling as he kissed his wife, one hand on her arm and the other on the guitar.

It was Día de Muertos. The one time of the year he could return to his fans who still lived, the one day he could retrieve what belonged to him, and he was arguing with a guitar. A guitar that only wanted to reminisce about Héctor. Not all the shows they’d played. Not the movies, the fans, the critics. A man who would have left his closest friend, his _brother,_ to languish in obscurity two inches from fame.

“He isn’t coming back for you.” It came out closer to a growl than Ernesto had intended, but no one was around to hear him anyway. “You’ll never leave this place.”

A mixture of satisfaction and spite radiated from the guitar.

Ernesto wanted to tear that guitar from its hooks, but he’d only get another shock for his trouble. He’d have to leave, to go back out into that graveyard and face his fans emptyhanded. Show them all that he couldn’t take his prize, his signature. Show them that he’d lost.

To a _guitar._

“If I were still living, you’d be in my hands. You wouldn’t have a _choice._ ”

He turned on his heel, but another memory surfaced. Héctor again, smiling on his birthday, months into their tour. “ _Twenty-one today, mi amigo!”_

Ernesto rolled his eyes. “What now?” 

 _Twenty-one._ His own voice again. _Twenty one. Twenty-one, if you haven’t noticed._

Then, another memory.

A crowd in love, gazing up at the stage from candlelit tables.

The final strains of “Remember Me,” as he sung it, as everyone now sung it.

The guitar, growing heavy in his hands. Slipping it off and passing it to a stagehand.

The bell.

_Twenty-one. Twenty-one._

_“Twenty-one today, mi amigo!”_

_Twenty-one, if you haven’t noticed._

“No,” he whispered. “No. That….no.” The bell was an accident. A tragedy. That his guitar had no longer been in his hands when it struck was a coincidence. A fortunate happenstance that such a valuable instrument had not been crushed alongside its owner. The number of years between the guitar’s survival and its transfer of ownership was simply another coincidence among many.

Against his better judgment, Ernesto turned back to the guitar. If he wasn’t mistaken—if he wasn’t seeing things, like he’d seen and heard and felt them since walking into his mausoleum—the guitar’s smile had widened.

 _“Ay, rough crowd.”_ Héctor’s voice again. Another memory, from that tour, from a show that hadn’t gone well, to say the least. _“Best not to go through this place again, I’d say.”_

“I’m _dead_ ,” he snapped. “What more can anyone do to me?”

Héctor’s voice, paired with a wry, mischievous sort of smile. _“Do you want to find out?”_

_*******_

The first Sunrise Spectacular followed a year later. 

People talked. They bemoaned the posters, the signs, the lack of the skull guitar on all of them. They accepted Ernesto’s excuses—”Ay, there’s only room for one beautiful skull onstage!” “It’s not the guitar that makes the music, mi familia, it’s the musician!”—with an air of resignation. They would have liked to see the guitar, would have liked to hear it played in more than a recording. 

But they accepted his excuses. That was what mattered to him. They accepted his excuses and didn’t push him to return to the Land of the Living. Ernesto  never would have said as much, but he was grateful. Even after he convinced himself that first Día de Muertos was imagination or a nightmare or a story he read long ago, his gratitude remained. 

In death, as in life, his family cared for him. 

**Author's Note:**

> The basic idea—that of the skull guitar as Héctor's alebrije—is not mine. After reading some theories and posts on Tumblr by im-fairly-whitty and others, the idea of Ernesto returning for a guitar that refused to go with him started to gel into something more solid. I'd originally intended to make the guitar more sassy than scary, but once I started writing, the opposite happened. 
> 
> The masterpost that inspired me is here: https://im-fairly-whitty.tumblr.com/post/172542662589/hey-can-you-point-me-toward-more-posts-on-the


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